The Hamstress

Through the deepest part of the grocery store, amongst the canned yams and powdered eggnog, I pushed a shopping cart with the force of one moving a broken down Oldsmobile. You see the right front wheel was quite a contrary little bastard refusing to align itself with the other three well greased wheels. This caused the cart to lock up and for much added force to be needed to get from point A to point B.

"Dear God why me?" I said, my forearms trembling.

Having broken into a mild sweat and breathing quite rapidly I stopped next to the pork loins in the meat section for a rest. I bent down and examined the obstinate wheel and to my chagrin found a mop thread entangled amongst its workings.

“Cocksuckers,” I cried, which happened to get the attention of a rather portly man who was perusing the ingredients on a package of lowfat scrapple.

I yanked madly at the string, picking my cart up off the ground in the process and letting it slam to the ground. This did not dislodge the wheel clogging menace so I removed my Mini-Leatherman key chain, extended the scissors and began snipping away.

It wasn’t long before I had the mop string cut into twenty or thirty pieces and the wheel ready for business. I tucked the Mini-Leatherman back into my pocket, got behind the cart and started off in a sprint pushing the cart in front of me to make sure the wheel was working properly. I’m happy to report that it was and that I was able to continue on in my quest to obtain sustenance.

Some time later, after sprinting up and down the aisle pushing the cart to test the wheel several more times, I found myself in front of the red meat, which was only a hop and skip down from a display of smoked ham and bin of frozen meatballs. It was there that I noticed something rather odd. There rooting through the display of smoked hams was a middle aged red haired woman wearing a black cape.

Now, wearing a black cape in and of itself might not be that big of a deal. People are after all known to wear all types of down filled outfits and fur lined accoutrements in the fall and winter months to keep themselves warm irregardless of how silly they might look. What struck me about this woman was her demeanor which was decidedly odd and held the distinct characteristics of someone that has just bonged a case of low grade petrol like sixteen ounce cans of Old Milwaukee. Yeah, she was drunk or maybe off whatever medication kept her from calling out to dead people and avoiding black squares of tile on the floor.

I pretended to be interested in the London broil which was on sale for $2.99 a pound but out of the corner of my continued to watch the woman. Underneath her cape she wore a sensible business suit of navy blue which really didn’t seem to go with the Count Dracula look but then I am no fashion guru myself so this observation other than being a nice tidbit of information to help describe this woman’s bizarre appearance might be totally useless.

“Grrrarrrah,” cried the woman.

She thrust a rather large smoked ham over her head and held it aloft as if a weightlifter in the Olympics. I flinched, fearing she might unleash the ham and hit me upon my exposed head but she merely held it there for a moment and then dropped it back into the bin with the rest of the hams.

“Nice hams,” I said.

She swiped at her lips smearing her orange lipstick. She looked like a deranged circus clown. I knew I should get out of the meat section but like a motorist passing a car wreck I found myself unable not to stare at the scene in front of me.

“Ham, ham ham,” the woman said.

“Right,” I said.

“Ham!” she said and with the agility of a fruit bat, cape flapping behind her, hopped up upon the edge of the freezer bin which housed the hams. She teetered there on her heels for a moment and then jumped into the hams.

I looked around to see who else was witnessing this strange occurrence but there was no one else around.

“You might twist an ankle in there,” I said.

She ignored me and went about tying the bottom of her cape together.

“Do you need help lifting a ham out of there?” I asked.

She again ignored me and began to fill her cape with smoked hams. She stuff ham after ham into her cape. I knew there was no way she was going to make it out of that freezer bin with all those hams in her cape but still she loaded the hams.

When her cape was quite full she yelled out one final, “HAM!” and then trying to take a drunken step fell out of the freezer bin and was buried under the hams in her cape on the floor.

“Are you all right?” I asked running up to what looked like a pile of hams covered in a cape.

There was no response and I knew then that I must get help. Surely the weight of all that ham had at the very least given her a concussion.

“Help,” I cried. “A woman got crushed by hams.”

I ran to the front of the store and found a manager who was reading a Star with Cameron Diaz on the cover.

“There’s a woman. She loaded her cape with smoked hams and then fell out of the freezer. I think she might be dead.”

“What?” the manager said.

“Come on,” I said grabbing his shirt, “a woman is injured.”

The manager set down his magazine and I dragged him back to the meat section but the woman with the hams in her cape was gone.

“She was right here,” I said.

The manager gave me that look, yes, the one that psychologists give crazy people when they say they wear aluminum foil on their heads because the CIA is trying to read their minds via their microwave ovens.

“I have to get back to work,” the manager said.

I nodded and went back to my cart. I was thinking I might have imagined the whole thing until I started down the dog food aisle and caught a glimpse of the automatic doors at the front and there she was. As if walking through thigh high mud the woman made her way out the doors pulling the ham laden cape behind her. I couldn’t believe no one had stopped her. I watched as I pushed my cart down the dog food aisle until she was in clear view through the large plate glass windows in the front of the store. Suddenly she stopped, turned towards the window and yelled, “HAM, HAM, HAM!”

She then reached into her cape and pulled out a monstrous smoked ham and without pausing threw it through the window smashing it into a thousand tiny pieces.

“Ham,” I said and turned up the next aisle.